Development
by Second Star On The Left
Summary: Sansa and Willas' relationship develops over the course of their marriage. Post-series, Willas POV


**AN: So basically, I took the prompts for the 30 Day drabble challenge on tumblr and turned it into one story because I'm lazy. So yeah. Title of each drabble is the prompt. Enjoy.**

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**beginning.**

Their first night together is not earth-shatteringly wonderful, but neither is it unutterably terrible. They fuck, they exchange pleasantries and compliments, they sleep. He does not mention the scars that criss-cross her back and shoulders, she makes no comment on the scars that twist sickly around his left knee.

It is probably not at all what she hoped for or expected of for her wedding night, but it is not precisely what he thought his own would be like, either. Theirs is a match made to the delight of his family and hers, on the orders of the Dragon Queen.

**accusation.**

It is far too easy to overhear rumours about his wife when his grandmother is the one spreading them, because discretion is a word that has never been part of Olenna Tyrell's vocabulary. Likely, if it were, she would say that it was only for servants.

He finds himself oddly defensive of Sansa, which is strange considering they have yet to have a proper conversation and share a bed only because everyone agrees that an heir takes priority over privacy, but he is the first to reprimand his grandmother when she accuses Sansa of marrying him for her own ends.

**restless.**

It does not take long, because he is only a man, for it to become difficult for him to sleep beside Sansa and retain a respectful degree of detachment. She is, after all, exquisitely beautiful, more so than his sister could ever hope to be, and so refined and composedly elegant that he would have to be a fool not to find her attractive.

Knowing that he is not at fault, not truly, does not make it any easier to sleep beside her night after night, close together and yet so far apart she may as well be at Winterfell.

**snowflake.**

He knows that he is in well over his head when he sees her outside during the snow, bundled up in furs that cannot quite live up to the heat of her hair and catching snowflakes on her tongue like a child.

Sansa Tyrell is a model of courtly decorum, reserved and mannerly at all times.

Sansa Stark loves beautiful things, thrives on them, and seeing her out there with snowflakes melting in her loose hair, her nose red with the cold, he has a sudden and overwhelming urge to surround her with the most beautiful things he can find.

**haze.**

He has never before been one to drink much, but Garlan and Leonette bring their son to present him to the family and of course he must toast his nephew.

Willas always does forget just what it means to drink in Garlan's company.

A meaningless jest on Garlan's part unhinges him, and soon they are both slumped over the table, giggling senselessly like boys half their ages drinking for the first time.

When he stumbles to bed, he considers what Sansa's reaction might be were he to touch her, but the wine has him asleep before he hits the pillow.

**flame**.

He's been fascinated by her hair since the moment he saw it – red hair is rare in the Reach, very rare indeed, and Sansa's is the reddest he's ever seen in his entire life.

It isn't just red, though, no more than a candle flame is just orange, or a sunflower is just golden-yellow. It's all those things and more, ranging in colour from the flesh of a blood-orange to the palest of sunshine, so many nuances and surprises that he often finds himself staring at it when they sit together in the quiet of his solar in the evenings.

**formal.**

He's always hated the feasts his father organises – they tend to be garish and bourgeois, what he counts as being more Redwyne than Tyrell. He himself is more Hightower than Tyrell, he knows, but that still leaves his father's taste sorely lacking in his opinion.

Sansa, although she would never say it aloud, seems to be of the same opinion, and it is with that in mind that he arranges it so that they are seated with Garlan and Leonette, Baelor and Rhonda, and they are far, far away from his father. They, at least, know how to behave properly.

**companion.**

Somewhere in the months since their marriage, Sansa has somehow supplanted Garlan as Willas' closest companion, his best friend. He has never been attracted to a constant companion before, to someone who he spends the vast majority of his time with, and it is disquieting that Sansa seems to completely oblivious to what he resolutely terms an infatuation.

It is much safer to be infatuated with a wife who sees you as a friend than to be in unrequited love with a woman who is yours in name only, after all. Infatuation can be overcome, but love is very permanent.

**move.**

He very nearly makes a fool of himself when they visit Oldtown for the Old Man's funeral.

He grieves deeply – he loved his grandfather, lived much of his life in the High Tower, and to see Baelor acting as the Voice of Oldtown is unnerving and upsetting.

He does not get drunk, but as soon as Sansa closes the doors of their rooms behind her, he sits heavily on the bed and sobs.

She cradles his head to her breast, and when he awakes twisted together with her in the morning, he wonders if perhaps something between them has shifted.

**silver.**

It's only when Margaery makes some comment in passing that he realises that Sansa does not own a single piece of silver jewellery, to his knowledge, and he quickly sets about remedying that fault.

He does not present the gift to her as such, merely leaves it on her dressing table tied with a white silk ribbon and waits for her reaction.

She arrives to dinner one night wearing a chain of delicate silver roses that disappears down under the neckline of her gown, but Willas knows that there is a dainty silver and moonstone direwolf nestled between her breasts.

**prepared.**

Even prepared as he thought he was for the eventuality, Sansa's quiet announcement still knocks the air from his lungs like a kick to the gut.

They have done their duty, have striven for an heir ever more determinedly as his father's health fails, and if she has noticed that he has been slightly more enthusiastic of late she has made no mention of it.

Still, the news that he is to be a father, that she is carrying his child, it is enough to make him swear that this – _their_ child will never be sent away as he was.

**knowledge.**

He thinks that it was growing up in Oldtown that did it, but Willas has always had an insatiable thirst for knowledge. With this in mind, he seeks out the maester and the midwives to learn everything he can about pregnancy and childbirth so that he may aid Sansa to the best of his ability.

He returns to their rooms understanding for the first time in his life that there is such a thing as too much knowledge, that it is possible to have too deep an understanding of something, and wishes that he had not gone to see them.

**denial.**

He wakes up to Sansa curled in on herself, around the barely perceptible swell of her belly, and blood soaking through her nightgown onto the sheets.

He has never shouted louder in his life, and for one hysterical moment he thinks that the Old Man would have been proud.

Margaery finds him hours later, tells him that the maester is finished with Sansa, that she is sorry, and he refuses to accept the truth of her words.

He returns to their rooms, and Sansa throws herself into his arms. He understands just how futile denial is, and together they mourn.

**wind.**

They give their lost son a name (Sansa is sure that he was a boy), Edwyn (a Stark name, he cannot deny her that, not after everything), and never mention him to anyone else. Somehow, the tragedy has brought them together in ways Willas could never have imagined, and he swears to her that he will see her happy again.

She looks at him with anguish in her big blue eyes and touches his cheek with gentle fingers. She tells him quietly that words are wind, but he tells her that these words, his solemnly sworn words, are the exception.

**order.**

They have no choice but to follow a rigid structure in their lives once his father's health finally breaks and Willas ascends to Lord of Highgarden.

It helps, somehow, and Sansa blossoms, managing to outmanoeuvre his grandmother, his mother and his sister without even seeming to try, endearing herself to every man and woman she meets with nothing more than a smile and a quiet word.

Willas' father always forgot that there is supposed to be a Lord _and _a Lady of Highgarden, not just a lord, and it is wonderful to see order being restored at Sansa's gentle hands.

**thanks.**

He looks at the litter of three puppies and wonders where in all the seven hells the bitch found some sort of wolf to breed with.

The pups will never make hunters now, he knows that, but he's never been able to hand a pup over to be drowned – these ones are dark grey and lupine, strong and just a touch wild.

He remembers suddenly that the sigil of House Stark is a direwolf, and Sansa's smile is all he needs when he presents her with the pups. It's the first true smile he's seen on her face since Edwyn's death, and that means the world to him.

**look.**

Sometime in the interim between his father's death and the Queen's visit, Willas forgets to pretend he is not in love with his wife.

It is so impossibly difficult _not _to love her that he gives up – he lets himself tuck her hair behind her ear or kiss her for no reason other than to taste her lips, refuses to be ashamed of how intense his desire for her is.

During the feast to celebrate the Queen's arrival, he catches Sansa's eye across the room and wonders if perhaps he is not the only one who has been holding back.

**summer.**

_She _kisses _him _for the first time in the middle of a conversation about what the maesters promise is the oncoming summer.

It takes him completely by surprise when she leans across the table, twists her fingers into his hair and pulls his mouth to hers. She tastes of strawberries from the conserve she's taken a liking to, and she smells not quite of rosemary. There's something intoxicating about kissing Sansa, and he quite forgets that they are sitting in the library, not his solar, and neither of them can help but laugh when his grandmother walks in on them.

**transformation**.

After that, something between them changes again.

Now, instead of sitting across from each other on either side of the fire in the evenings, they sit close together on the couch or the window seat. Now, instead of spending their days apart, maintaining their individual aspects of Highgarden, they make excuses to spend time in each other's company.

Now, instead of spending most nights sleeping on opposite sides of their bed, they press close together and sleep every night in each other's arms.

Everyone notices the difference, especially his grandmother, but for once her comments don't bother him.

**tremble.**

The first time they truly make love – not lie together, not fuck, but actually make love – Willas can't seem to stop his hands from trembling.

Before, he was certain that he had touched every inch of her skin – they have been married for almost three years, after all, and while there was no love between them for much of that, they did not shy away from their duty – but she feels brand new now. _He _feels new, like a boy with his first woman, shy and desperate to please her.

He realises that Sansa is trembling as well, and that makes so much sense in a strange way.

**sunset.**

Sunset comes early in the winter, and they eat their dinner by the window, looking out across the Mander as the sun sinks low beyond the horizon.

She makes idle conversation – she's terrifyingly good at that, a legacy from her time in the Eyrie, he thinks – and only picks at her lemon cakes, her absolute favourite, which indicates that there is something amiss.

He questions her.

She tells him that she visited the maester today.

Regardless of the pain, he falls to his knees at her feet and presses his lips to her stomach, thanking any gods who are listening.

**mad.**

He finds himself angry – furiously, blisteringly, blindingly angry – with her for the first time in their marriage after she has her fall.

She should have known better than to try and navigate the kennels without him or one of the dog handlers, should have known better than to flout the maester's orders to stay abed in this late stage of her pregnancy. He does not think that he could bear to see that grief in her eyes again, to see her broken as she was after they lost Edwyn, and he finds himself incoherent with rage that she would take such a foolish risk.

**thousand.**

Willas has seen a hundred beautiful things, a thousand, a thousand thousand, in his life. He has lived in Highgarden and Oldtown, visited Sunspear and Casterly Rock and a dozen other places renowned for their beauty.

But nothing, he knows, nothing will ever even begin to compare to the sight of Sansa, her hair lank and stuck to her head, her face grey with exhaustion, nursing a tiny babe with blue eyes and Tyrell hair.

He changes his mind when Naerys, their daughter, looks up at him with those Tully eyes, wide and copied almost exactly from her mother's face.

**outside.**

Naerys loves the gardens, and Willas loves to carry her in the crook of his elbow and then later on his hip and show her the roses, the hot-houses, the arboretums and the orchards.

There is a fountain in one of the tiny handkerchief gardens tucked around the castle that she particularly loves, one that is finally running again now that the spring is on its way, and it is here that he and Naerys can usually be found before dinner, her tucked into his cloak to keep away the persistent chill in the air.

It's there that Sansa shares her news.

**winter**.

Winter ends slowly, gradually, so much so that they almost don't notice it.

Naerys is joined by Olwyn by the time the white raven heralding the spring arrives from the Citadel, so alike they might be twins had it not been for their colouring, Olwyn with Sansa's hair but Willas' eyes.

He knows that Sansa worried that he would no longer desire her after she had borne him two (three) children, but he finds that Olwyn's birth and spring's arrival usher in some new intensity in their marriage, a steadiness that was missing before, and he can only hope that it grows steadier as summer comes.

**diamond**.

Most women adore diamonds, would have emeralds and rubies dripping from their fingers and wrists and throats, in Willas' experience.

Sansa has a single piece of diamond jewellery, a narrow necklace of small, round diamonds that sits close to her throat and rests just at her collarbones. He had it made for her when Daved was born, but she rarely wears it outside their chambers, preferring moonstones or plain silver or gold. Occasionally, she wears sapphires to match her eyes, but it is usually moonstones.

When she does wear the diamond necklace in their chambers, she rarely wears anything else.

**letters**.

He takes a quiet pride in teaching the children their letters. Naerys is like him, absorbing every scrap of information put before her with ease. Olwyn, too, learns easily, if a touch less enthusiastically than her sister. They are a formidable pair, just barely a year apart and as close as he and Garlan ever were.

Daved finds learning more difficult, and Willas worries for him constantly, but it is Sansa who realises that their son sometimes sees his words backwards. Once that is understood, Daved proves to the maester that he is just as clever as his sisters.

**promise.**

When he put his cloak around her shoulders, he promised to protect and cherish her as long as he lived.

When they lost Edwyn, he promised that he would see her happy once more.

Willas likes to think that he has fulfilled both promises, as well as the hundreds of other promises, great and small, whispered into her skin and sworn over their children's cradles and made in a hundred different places.

What he promises is unimportant, he knows – what matters is that he keeps his word. Words are wind, Sansa is fond of saying, unless they are her husband's words.

**simple**.

Marriage had always seemed like some sort of grand adventure that he would never have, some fairy-tale that she would be lucky to experience.

The truth of it was much simpler.

The truth of marriage, they had discovered in their long years together, was that it was all about compromise, and all about arguing, and all about love and happiness and a dozen things that they could not name but that they understand somehow without understanding how.

Willas knows, though, that he could never have been as happy with any other woman as he is with Sansa and their children.

**future.**

Naerys' eyes when she presents Prince Edwyn Martell to them are the very same as Sansa's were when she presented Naerys to him.

Olwyn's grin is just like Margaery's when she rides away with Coren Tully, even after Sansa forbids her from leaving without an escort.

Daved's hair looks auburn in the sunshine when he throws a green and gold cloak around Melia Oakheart's shoulders.

Highgarden in the summer is always more alive than anywhere else, but filled with their children and grandchildren, Sansa and Willas are sure that nowhere has ever been more beautiful.


End file.
